Daughter of Found Mom: 'I Will Never Call Her Again'

(Newser)
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A woman whose mother went missing for 40 years says she doesn't predict any joyous reunion—and feels fresh pain knowing her mom is alive, People reports. "I'm angry," says Tammy Miller, 45, whose mother, Lula Ann Gillespie-Miller, 69, was discovered Thursday in a small Texas town. "This isn't going to be one of those happy, made-for-TV movies." Gillespie-Miller abandoned her four children, including Miller, in Indiana in 1974 and was assumed dead, Miller says. When Indiana State Police tracked the woman down under a different name, Miller says she was "shocked" and called her mom the next day. "It was less than a two-minute conversation," says Miller. "She said, 'I'll call you when I'm able to talk.'"

"I will never call her again," Miller adds. "It felt like being rejected all over again." Gillespie-Miller was a rape survivor who struggled with alcohol and her husband's death in a car accident, Miller says, but that hardly alleviates the pain. "I'm glad she's alive, but it hurts emotionally knowing this was her choice," says Miller. Gillespie-Miller "felt she was too young to be a mother at the time and signed her children over to her parents," according to a police report quoted by NBC News. Miller is glad her mom left the kids with "Grandma Catherine," whose son fathered the other three kids; Miller's dad was apparently an unmarried man who had an affair with Gillespie-Miller. "My grandmother who raised me did an awesome job," says Miller. "She never went one day without letting us kids know she loved us." (This remarkable family reunion is a much happier tale.)